Apple loses patent suit to Nokia, Sony

A Delaware jury has ruled that Apple violated three patents owned by MobileMedia Ideas LLC. (MMI), a patent holding company that was created by Nokia, Sony and MPEG-LA.

The original complaint, filed in March of 2010, alleged that Apple's iPhone used technology protected by fourteen patents held by MobileMedia Ideas. However, all but three patents, 6070068, 6253075, and 6427078, were removed from the suit before it began. MobileMedia Ideas describes these patents as relating to "incoming/current call processing", "incoming call rejection", and "image capture/transfer."

Though Apple dismissed the complaint as invalid "due to obviousness," the jury clearly disagreed. They took just four hours to make their decision after sitting in on a one-week trial, to side with MMI's claim that they had "suffered and will continue to suffer damages and irreparable injury." It is not yet clear what that will translate to in dollars, but MobileMedia CEO Larry Horn told Bloomberg that the amount should be "substantial."

Of course, he may be slightly biased in his assessment. A trial will be scheduled to determine the financial outcome of the suit.

Patents like for designs, for example, are good reasons for patenting, but things like incoming call rejection? Im pretty sure that's one of the most basic things a phone needs. I highly doubt I would be crying over people using my call rejection feature or something like that. All this is limited to my opinion tho.

What your saying is its an essential patent.
Regardless of how important it is, someone designed the answer (excuse pun) to it, i.e. Nokia and is now reaping the reward. If they hadn't designed it, would we have this feature (baring in mind it didn't exist before)?
Who knows but because someone took the risk, they reap the reward, hence WHY we have patents.

I got your point but you are wrong!
The call regection feature is not exactly what the patent protects in this case but It's the tecnology used to do so. In this case the code behind it.
In other words, apple could have it done in other way, but the way that did was someone else idea, so they must pay!

Call rejection as a idea was not patented, but it's part of Nokia's essential GSM patents. Nokia afterall owns GSM space with over 65% of all GSM patents out there (Ericsson being second with 20%). Nokia also owns around 60% of LTE patents.

Apple would be more profitable then "windows phone" but microsoft as a whole... I doubt that. Think about it microsoft has their fingers into just about everything computer related, even mac and fyi Apple wouldn't even exist without microsoft

Without the competition from Apple, I highly doubt Microsoft would be where it is today. And who knows if they would've come up with the idea to "borrow" Xerox's ideas 30 years ago. I mean, it seems likely enough, but we really can't know for sure.

The market experts and tech journalist's are normally soulless 9 to 5'ers who just blindly follow whatever trend _was_ happening, in Apples case they are 2 years out of date.

Right now I think things are slowly changing, the iphone 5 was a tedious peice of technology, and its implementation is not great (too fragile). If Apple follow form then the 5s should be the same with a faster processor and NFC+maybe wireless charging added, these things won't sell themselves anymore.

Businesses usually go out of business because of poor management,or poor products...apple will go out of business because of patents... Simply because they started the whole business on one principal which is "use ideas that belong to others"

Are you Nuts! Steve Jobs invented the word Patent. He said it was very difficult, but after years of working on it, he finally cracked it. And the result is Amazing! and Simple, and so intuitive you'd think people had been using the word their whole lives!

Apple dismissing Nokia's patent claim as "obvious" has got to be the most laughable remark in tech in 2 years. An incoming call rejection patent is obvious but a square with rounded corners patent? That must be protected at all cost!

i dont get it, almost everything we are using on the phone is patent from someone, if you need to pay for every patent wouldnt that be crazy amount, i wonder how those deals are made, i understand some companies trade patents even though they are competition, but sounds confusing